Vatican Document Attempts To Influence Governments

March 12, 1987|The New York Times

ROME -- The Vatican`s document on human reproduction exploits what some church officials consider an unparalleled opportunity to influence governments before they enact laws on controversial medical innovations.

Roman Catholic leaders are acutely aware that many nations have ignored church condemnations of abortion and divorce, but Vatican officials are optimistic that some legislatures will eventually take actions demanded in the document issued Tuesday, like a prohibition on genetic experimentation with living embryos.

The document recognizes that the ethical questions are diverse and complex and require long study. The Vatican is not expecting quick action in world capitals.

It does believe, however, that many people want the science of the body to be governed by moral norms, particularly in countries like the United States where technology is moving most quickly.

The first sentence of the document says a variety of doctors and scientists, as well as bishops and other churchmen, have asked the Vatican to express a moral judgment on newly developed techniques to manipulate procreation, such as test-tube fertilization.

Many of these requests came from non-Catholics. That fact along with a reading of events around the world convinced Pope John Paul II that a void existed in man`s moral code because science was repeatedly posing previously unknown problems.

Early in the 1980s, the pope decided the church had to respond, according to Vatican officials. After almost two years of drafting, that response came Tuesday and was entitled, Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Orgins and on the Dignity of Procreation: Replies to Certain Questions of the Day.

The document contains significant developments in the church`s views in at least two areas: the relationship between civil and moral law, and the challenge of managing modern science.

In treating these themes, the document provides the most complete expression to date of ideas that have preoccupied John Paul II throughout his pontificate.

It is also one of the most perscriptive documents recently produced by the Vatican in that it not only lays down moral judgments but also calls on governments to take specific actions like prohibiting surrogate motherhood and the creation of embryo banks.

``This is something new in the history of mankind,`` Joaquin Navarro- Valls, the chief Vatican spokesman, said. ``People around the world are trying to determine the ethical implications of these developments, but so far no government has enacted laws on the subject.``

The church, he added, ``saw a rare chance to try to influence laws that have not been published yet.``

``To this end, the document offers governments moral principles which can be the basis for new laws, and it makes suggestions that are much more specific than is usually the case with Vatican statements,`` he said.

Defining the church`s role in the political arena has been a longstanding concern for the pope. He has, for instance, aggressively disciplined priests who took appointed or elected government jobs. Political governing is a role he insists must be left to laymen.

This documents argues, as the pope has often argued before, that civil laws must reflect moral laws and that the church has a duty and a special competence to illuminate moral laws.

But the document goes a step further and defines the type of behavior expected of politicians and other laymen.

After stating that civil laws must respect moral norms ``concerning human rights, human life and the insitution of the family,`` the document says: ``Politicians must commit themselves, through their interventions upon public opinion, to securing in society the widest possible consensus on such essential points and to consolidating this consensus wherever it risks being weakened or is in danger of collapse.``

That statement, the first of its kind in a Vatican proclamation, could prove relevant to debates that have arisen between Catholic bishops and Catholic politicians over abortion laws. Such debate is likely to be revived on the issues treated by the document.

It also addresses the responsibility of laymen outside government who are faced with civil laws that legitimize what the church considers immoral practices.

It says ``all men of good will must commit themselves`` to changing these laws, adding that ``conscientious objection`` to such laws must be ``supported and recognized.``

In apparent praise of anti-abortion advocates, the document says: ``A movement of passive resistance to the legitimation of practices contrary to human life and dignity is beginning to make an ever sharper impression upon the moral conscience of many, especially among specialists in the biomedical sciences.``

The Vatican certainly expects that the considerable resources the church has mustered to fight abortion will be sent into battle on the new biomedical issues.